Anatomy of an Avenger: What makes this Captain so American?

Forty-nine years ago, Marvel Comics debuted the first issue of The Avengers, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s answer to DC Comics’ Justice League of America. Teaming up such classic comic heroes as Iron Man and Thor with lesser-known characters such as Ant-Man and Wasp, the series was an instant success, spawning countless crossovers and tie-ins to other Marvel titles.

Now, after various stops and starts, Disney has finally brought The Avengers to the big screen, with Joss Whedon’s all-star film hitting screens across North America May 4. But Whedon’s collection of superheroes is not entirely faithful to that original September 1963 issue — instead, today’s team is made up of both Golden Age icons (Captain America) and revamped versions of ’60s mainstays (Nick Fury).

To help you distinguish your Hulks from your Hawkeyes, the Post’s Barry Hertz and Rebecca Tucker will spend the next two weeks breaking down each member of 2012’s Avengers team — and their enemies. Today: Captain America.

Hero Captain America

Alias Steve Rogers, a swashbuckling super-soldier with a heart that bleeds red, white and blue.

Abilities A wimpy weakling before being injected with a super-soldier serum, Rogers doesn’t technically have superpowers, though his strength, speed, reflexes and healing powers are at the “zenith of natural human potential.” Plus, those years spent fighting Nazis and other foes on the battleground have given Captain America a brilliant military mind. Take that, Norman Schwarzkopf.

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Comics background It’s no secret a wealth of Golden Age heroes (that is, characters originating between the late 1930s until 1950) were conceived as uber-patriotic, Nazi-fighting allegories. But Captain America may have been the most fiercely U.S.A.! U.S.A.! of them all. Initially conceived by writer Joe Simon in 1940, the character came about specifically through Simon’s repulsion over the actions of Nazi Germany. In a break from other members of The Avengers, Cap debuted not in a serial comic, but his own title, Captain America Comics #1, which appeared on stands December 1940, more than a year before the Pearl Harbor attack. Over the course of the next seven decades (with a prolonged break in the ’50s, after the patriotic fervor of the Second World War died down) Rogers fought the villainous Nazi Red Skull, was cryogenically frozen in the North Atlantic, donned an exoskeleton after the super-soldier serum started to attack his body, and revealed his secret identity to the world after the 9/11 attacks. Oh, and then he dies after being shot in a Red Skull-orchestrated scheme in 2007. Actually, scratch that: He miraculously returns to life in 2009.

Filmography Although the 2011 Chris Evans-starring Captain America: The First Avenger is what most audiences remember, Rogers actually first appeared on the big screen (well, a screen) in 1990’s Captain America, with Matt Salinger (that’s right, J.D. Salinger’s son) playing the titular patriot. (Well, OK, if you want to get technical about things, Cap also starred in a 1944 serial series, the first Marvel character to make the jump into a medium outside comics.) The Salinger film never made it to U.S. theatres, though — instead it was shelved for two years until it was quietly released on home video in 1992.